Innocence,

OUR VIEW:

September 19, 2001

sense of security

first casualties

By Herald Times Editorial Board

However, many Americans are faced with a dilemma of the heart and their very being in response to the attacks that likely killed at least 6,000 souls. In churches in Otsego County, as well as in mosques and synagogues across the United States last weekend, the message from the pulpit in most houses of worship was one of compassion, restraint and a caution against seeking blind vengeance. But for many people it's tough, if not impossible right now, to shake the image of jetliners crashing into the World Trade Center in balls of flames, and the realization that life as we know it in the United States is changed forever. Everything changed Sept. 11, 2001.

On Monday, a day when Americans went back to work, the stock markets reopened and Major League Baseball resumed play for the first time since the terrorist attacks, President Bush's tone was even more vehement to bring the "evildoers" and "barbaric people" responsible for the violence to justice. While visiting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, the president used a brief appearance before the cameras to elevate his rhetoric and sharpen his focus on the alleged mastermind of the terrorist network believed responsible for the Sept. 11 attack on America.

Advertisement

"Do you want bin Laden dead?' Bush was asked by a reporter.

"I want justice," the president replied. "There's an old poster out West, as I recall, that says 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'"

In his bluntest language since last week's attacks on New York and Washington, Bush warned the nation Monday to prepare for U.S. military casualties in the coming war against terrorism. Essentially Bush and his administration are telling Americans that the sanitized wars and military actions of the past like Desert Storm and Kosovo where the military refused to engage the enemy at anything less than 15,000 feet from the belly of a fighter bomber are gone. This war will be messy, and it will likely take many years to wage and there will be casualties - which has been the main objective of the U.S. military to avoid at all costs since Vietnam. Simply put, Americans no longer had any tolerance or stomach for seeing its sons and daughters shipped home in black body bags from distant battles in countries they knew little about.

Everything changed Sept. 11, 2001.

On Monday, Bush said the military "is ready to defend freedom at any cost."

Already 50,000 reservists have been called up to help in air patrols around major cities, intelligence gathering and engineering projects. In Michigan, the state's 11,500 Army and Air Force Reserves have not been notified whether they will be among those activated. The Justice Department will be requesting a legislative package loosening current laws regarding intelligence-gathering restrictions, such as the use of phone taps, though it vows not to trample the rights and privacy of Americans.

We also learned this week that Air Force jets had been scrambled to intercept the off-course jetliners last Tuesday, but they were not able to reach them soon enough, though their orders were to shoot down the commercial airliners had they continued toward suspected targets in Washington and New York.

Yes, everything has changed, and one could argue that the innocence and sense of security felt by most Americans has already imploded and can be chalked up as the first casualties in this new war the nation's leaders have declared against terrorism.